


Mastery

by lawless



Category: The Following
Genre: Alternate Event, Alternate Timeline, Angst, Episode Tag, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawless/pseuds/lawless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, it’s Paul, not Emma, who helps Jacob overcome his inhibitions. Episode tag for 1x06.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mastery

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta-reviewed; all mistakes are mine.

“Jacob?” Paul says faintly. His breathing is labored. It’s been nearly two hours since Jacob jacked the truck, and he’s had to stop seven times already to tear up clothing and wrap it around Paul’s belly because blood won’t stop seeping, making Paul resemble a blood-soaked balloon with a slow leak. 

Jacob has to do everything himself because Paul’s too weak to apply the pressure needed to staunch the bleeding. It’s to the point now where the bindings are like a bloody corset; they may prevent Paul from collapsing, but they’re so tight that they’re impeding his ability to breathe. For all Jacob knows, Paul’s lungs are filled with blood anyway. 

“What?” Jacob says as gently as he can. 

Paul’s response is so soft that Jacob can barely hear it. “I’m n-not guh—”

Jacob lightly rubs Paul’s upper arm with his right hand and opens his mouth to speak, but Paul scowls and twitches his head, determined to say his piece no matter how hard it is to get the words out. “N-not gonna m-make it. You need – ugh – to go on without me.” The more he says, the less he stutters, but the longer he speaks, the more slowly he speaks, his voice trailing off toward the end. 

Jacob nods. He’s already grasped that Paul will die if he doesn’t receive medical attention soon, but taking Paul to a hospital would involve turning themselves in, and dropping him off would amount to abandonment. Emma’s already done that to both of them; he’s not going to turn around and do it to Paul. But Emma’s betrayal also means they no longer have access to the kind of support that might cough up the name and address of an accommodating doctor. They’re both screwed. 

While the sun’s up now, it’s too early for any walk-in clinics to be open. Paul’s in no shape to force his way in, and Jacob isn’t sure what supplies to look for even if he was able to batter down a door or break a window to get in. Nor does he have the time to use a smartphone app to search for a local clinic. He’s got his hands full driving and trying to keep Paul alive. 

It hurts knowing that Emma’s claim to love Jacob for himself rather than as Joe’s pawn was just a convenient lie. Maybe he’s being melodramatic, but Jacob feels just as badly gutted as Paul, except it’s his heart, not his innards, that’s been ripped apart. 

The sunlight that the lowered visor doesn’t obscure blinds Jacob momentarily. He swerves before correcting their course. He takes mental inventory of the weapons available to him. The knife Hardy used to stab Paul is safely stowed in his pants pocket. He’s fairly sure that Paul still had the gun on him when they ran out of the farmhouse. 

The idea of using the gun freaks Jacob out more than using the knife does; although he’s never stabbed anyone to death, at least he’s used a knife before. He doesn’t know anything about wielding a gun, including how to tell whether the safety is on or not. But he also knows that handled correctly, a gun is more efficient than a knife. 

He turns toward Paul, whose skin is beginning to turn gray, and asks, “How do you feel?”

“Shitty,” Paul manages to say. “L-like I’m bleeding to death.” The tune of Country Joe McDonald’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixing To Die Rag” pops into Jacob’s head. Emma used to play it; apparently, her mother liked it. The song is about Vietnam, but it could just as easily apply to him and Paul. Jacob feels like he’s been through the wringer, and Paul’s gut wound make him looks like he’s been through a war. Those feel like apt metaphors for betrayal.

Jacob puts his hand on the lump where he’s stashed the knife. Its bulk is solid, almost comforting. It would be ironic, or perhaps fitting is the better word, if the instrument that made Paul suffer and bleed is what also brings him release. 

Paul’s been staring at him all this time. He fumbles the gun out of his pocket and asks, “Need this?”

Jacob glares at him, a little horrified to hear his thoughts put into words. He says no and pushes the gun away. He doesn’t want to mutilate Paul’s body any more than he has to, and for some reason, shooting Paul after he’s been knifed strikes him as overkill. 

The gun clatters to the floor. Jacob rotates the steering wheel to the right and stops on the shoulder of the road. He shifts the transmission into park. Paul’s body shudders as he sighs but he doesn’t exhibit any curiosity about why Jacob is pulling over; he must suspect what’s about to happen. Jacob places his hand on top of Paul’s and gently squeezes it for a few seconds before releasing it. 

Jacob looks around for something to write on and something to write with. He locates a pen and a small notebook that the truck’s owner used to record gasoline purchases and mileage and begins to write. Paul coughs but otherwise remains silent.

When he’s finished, Jacob puts the pen and notebook back where he found them so his last words don’t become stained and illegible. They’re important, not so much for the police’s benefit, or his family’s, but for Joe’s. He’s confident that Joe will find out what they are; given the sources he’s cultivated, Joe is as all-knowing as God is popularly believed to be. 

Jacob shifts in his seat, angling himself toward Paul, whose head is lolling back like a marionette whose strings have been cut, his eyes closed and his breathing ragged. Jacob looks at him, trying to determine where to aim the blow. If possible, he wants to make this a clean strike.

He struggles to remember all the first aid he’s ever learned and any advice his mother the nurse has ever given him so he knows what not to do. Once he’s chosen his target, he pulls the knife out, resisting the impulse to wipe the blade clean. It doesn’t matter now and besides, Paul’s blood is already on the blade. This doesn’t need to be pretty. In fact, it’s better if it’s not. 

Paul moans and shakes his head. Jacob transfers the knife to his left hand, touching Paul’s thigh with his right hand to soothe him. “Shh,” Jacob says, picking up Paul’s hand and rubbing his thumb over it. “I’m not going to let you suffer, but you need to keep still.”

Paul’s eyes open, and he nods before sighing and wresting his hand away. Paul kisses the tips of his fingers and then presses them to the back of Jacob’s hand. 

“I love you too,” Jacob tells Paul before leaning over and kissing him on the cheek. He hadn’t realized how true that was until Emma left them. Now he knows the extent to which the two of them have been pitted against the world in reality, not just in pretense. 

He grips the handle of the knife with both hands. Before, he couldn’t bring himself to stab women he didn’t know. Maybe it was that lack of familiarity, or maybe the chivalry that had been drummed into him from childhood was the problem. But in the seconds before he surges forward and sticks the knife in Paul’s throat, he knows he can do this. He’s one of Joe’s initiates now.

Blood spurts onto the windshield and over the dashboard as Paul’s heart continues to beat. Paul chokes and his chest expands and contracts a few times before it stops moving. Jacob waits, then presses his fingers to Paul’s wrist looking for a pulse. Nothing. He waits some more, searching for movement, any sign that Paul’s still alive. He doesn’t notice any.

Now comes the hard part. Jacob leans forward and feels around on the floor for the gun. He didn’t want to use it on Paul, but it feels right to turn it on himself. Successfully knifing himself would take better aim and more determination than shooting himself in the head. He tests the trigger and the safety until he’s ready. 

He eases the safety off, inserts the barrel of the gun into his mouth, and pulls the trigger.

* * *

It isn’t until hours later that someone reports seeing a car parked on the side of the road with two bodies in the front seat. The first officer on the scene is puzzled at the state of Jacob’s clothing until he spots the bloody bandages made from shredded clothing lying discarded in the cab.

The notebook Jacob wrote in isn’t discovered until the crime scene investigators search the truck. The gloves the technician is wearing makes flipping the pages difficult. The last entry says:

 _joe carroll is not my master. i am my own master, and i choose death._

Forensic analysis determines that the message is in Jacob Wells’ handwriting and that Jacob’s fingerprints are all over the notebook, in some places obscuring the truck owner’s fingerprints. The county medical examiner notes that Paul only had a few hours left before he succumbed to the injuries he sustained when Ryan Hardy stabbed him and rules Paul’s death a homicide and Jacob’s a suicide. She does not outright call murdering Paul an act of mercy, but anyone who understands the technical language of autopsy reports can read between the lines. 

The day after the autopsy report is filed, Olivia Warren visits Joe and reads the autopsy report and Jacob’s last words to him. She expects Joe to be enraged, but he chuckles instead, observing, “Jacob was such a romantic that only pity could motivate him to kill.” She is still puzzling over this as she walks out of the prison.

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with the concept for this story and started writing it right after watching episode 1x06, but for a host of reasons I didn’t finish it until now. In the meantime, I watched episodes 1x07 through 1x09. Readers will have to take it my word for it that I envisioned putting Paul out of his misery as Jacob’s first kill long before I saw 1x09. Also, Jacob telling Paul he loves him was always an integral part of the story, not a way to fix its absence in episode 1x09. The only thing this story was intended to fix was Jacob’s prior inability to kill by providing him motivation to do so consistent with the way his character had been depicted so far.
> 
> Also, I wrote this story before we learned that Jacob went to medical school, which means this story is thoroughly Jossed.


End file.
